What inspired us to write #MadAsHell

We wanted to share with you how we arrived at our subject matter for #MadAsHell.

We can’t wait to share it with you all on October 14th at 81 Renshaw Street at 7pm.

If you’re the kind of person who gets told they’re ‘too passionate’ or ‘always gives their opinion when it’s not needed’ then you’re our type of person – and we want you there with us getting mad.

2016 has been a shit one. Let’s embrace it and seethe together.

The starting point for #MadAsHell

Inspiration for #MadAsHell

Ruth Hartnoll

When we all sat down to talk about what had made us mad this year, I realised it was stuff that’s always made me mad, but had been given a new focus in 2016. The coverage of female Olympians this year has been pretty dire. Whilst they were being spoken about and given air time, they weren’t being written about in the same way the men were. Husbands were mentioned, engagements ambushed their medals, they were compared to cat fighting.

My piece highlights the absurd coverage and pokes fun at it.

I’ve also got two other pieces that I want to remain a surprise…so you’ll have to turn up and play Spot The Feminist when the pieces are being performed.

Steph Dickinson

Given that getting angry is pretty much what I do on a day to day basis (as does any lefty living under a tory government), I found it surprisingly difficult to think of anything to write initially. My first idea was to take up the theme of the Labour party’s internal power struggle, but it quickly became apparent that nothing I could come up with would ever be as ridiculous and bizarre as the reality.

Eventually I settled on an idea that’s contemporary, but alas not exclusive to 2016, ‘poverty porn’, and the resulting stigma around welfare. Various characters are trotted out on a Jeremy Kyle-type TV show to highlight the absurdity of certain stereotypes in society.

The resulting piece is a little different from most things I’ve written before, but I hope it will give some pause for thought.

Joel Whitall

I wanted to write a piece based on my experience of restaurants because over the years I’ve come across people who behave in such a way, I wonder how they function in everyday life and form relationships so, a ‘How to behave’ piece came to mind.

It highlights the many issues from working on the minimum wage, zero hour contracts, immigrant workers and many more. It’s the baby boomers that got the brunt of my hate for this LABB night.

They voted in swathes for Brexit, they’ve fucked up our atmosphere, they’ve created a world of invisible money and debt, they like cheap chardonnay and don’t know a ribeye from a sirloin. Basterds.

Gemma Curtis

After thinking of the various things that make me mad I decided a lot of them fall under; how people behave in public. I tried to think about situations in which we become prone to acting out of character. Awkward situations. And from this, I thought about getting drunk for the first time with work colleagues, family parties of new partners and job interviews (all of which made me feel a bit sick), until I settled on the ultimate awkward situation… first dates.

I took inspiration from ‘Great British Problems’ and wanted my piece to embody how we act vs. what we really think. The struggle of making a good first impression, or feeling that we always have to, is what’s at the heart of my piece and the infuriating task of trying to get this right is what makes me #MadAsHell.